Extended Enterprise Learning : Definition, Features and Benefits

Types of Extended Enterprise Learning Opportunities

Extended enterprise training encompasses various types of training programs aimed at stakeholders outside the immediate organization. These programs are designed to ensure that external partners, customers, suppliers, and others aligned with the company are well-informed and skilled. Here are some key types of extended enterprise training:

• Customer and Channel Partner Training: In sectors like technology, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and retail, training sales channels and customers is vital, though not the core business. Speeding up the certification of partners for new products can lead to significant sales boosts. Well-informed channels enhance product sales and customer education, with measurable ROI advantages over employee learning.
• Commercial Training Providers: Subject matter experts across industries often sell training and certifications through diverse mediums like online courses, webinars, and mobile apps. These providers, focusing on both organizational and individual learners, rely on LMS for customer attraction and retention. This segment, which includes fields like pest control and insurance, benefits from low entry barriers due to affordable LMS solutions.
• Associations and Member-Based Entities: Associations, leveraging LMS technology, have shifted revenue generation from traditional membership fees to certification and content sales. They require integration with association management systems, sophisticated certification processes, and advanced ecommerce capabilities
• Public Agencies: Government agencies at all levels provide educational content, sometimes as a paid service, but often funded by taxes. These organizations have strict requirements for purchasing, IT, legal, and support aspects. LMS vendors specializing in the public sector cater to entities like the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare, and the FBI, which offer extensive training programs to relevant professionals and departments.
• Academic Institutions: Higher education institutions utilize LMS for managing various academic processes including scheduling, registration, student-teacher interactions, and grading. This sector, encompassing universities and community colleges, demands highly specialized LMS solutions tailored to their specific educational needs.

Key Benefits of Extended Enterprise Learning

• Expanding Market Reach: Extended Enterprise Learning facilitates connections with a wider audience of customers and partners. This expanded network can significantly boost market presence and open new opportunities for collaboration and growth.
• Value-Added Interactions: By engaging with stakeholders through learning initiatives, businesses can enhance the quality of interactions. This not only strengthens relationships but also fosters a culture of continuous improvement and shared knowledge.
• Elevated Return on Investment: Implementing Extended Enterprise Learning can lead to increased profitability and reduced operational costs. This approach maximizes the efficiency of resources and investment, leading to a substantial improvement in return on investment (ROI).
• Brand Enhancement: This form of learning helps differentiate a company in a competitive market. It builds a reputation for innovation and commitment to development, which can significantly improve brand perception and loyalty.
• Customized Stakeholder Experiences: Extended Enterprise Learning allows companies to offer personalized learning experiences to a diverse group of stakeholders. Tailoring these experiences to meet specific needs and preferences can enhance engagement and satisfaction.
• Fostering Talent Development: In critical times, this approach to learning becomes crucial for talent development. It ensures that employees and partners are equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge, enabling the organization to navigate challenges effectively and maintain a competitive edge.

How To Implement Extended Enterprise Learning into Your Organization

Implementing extended enterprise learning involves a series of strategic steps to ensure that external stakeholders are effectively trained and aligned with your organization's goals and standards. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

• Identify Your Audience: Determine who your external learners are. This could include partners, suppliers, customers, or other stakeholders. Understanding their roles, needs, and learning preferences is crucial.
• Define Learning Objectives: Clearly articulate what you want to achieve with your extended enterprise learning program. Objectives should align with your broader business goals and address the specific needs of your external audience.
• Choose the Right Platform: Select a Learning Management System (LMS) that can effectively deliver training to external learners. Ensure it is user-friendly, accessible, and scalable to accommodate varying numbers of users.
• Develop Relevant Content: Create or source learning content that is relevant, engaging, and tailored to the needs of your external audience. This could include interactive modules, videos, webinars, and documentation.
• Ensure Accessibility and Flexibility: Make sure the learning content is accessible on various devices and platforms and can be consumed at the learner’s own pace. Flexibility is key to accommodating diverse schedules and learning styles.
• Integrate with Business Systems: If possible, integrate your LMS with other business systems (like CRM or ERP) to streamline processes and provide a seamless learning experience.
• Implement Tracking and Reporting: Utilize the LMS’s tracking and reporting features to monitor learner progress, engagement, and completion rates. This data is vital for measuring the effectiveness of your training program.
• Solicit Feedback and Iterate: Regularly gather feedback from learners to understand what is working and what isn’t. Use this feedback to continuously improve the training content and delivery methods.
• Promote the Program: Actively promote the training program to your external audience. Effective communication is key to ensuring high participation rates and engagement.
• Evaluate and Update Regularly: Regularly review the program’s outcomes against your objectives. Update the training content and approach as needed to keep it relevant and effective.

Types of Extended Enterprise Training Based on Company Needs

• Customer Training: Focuses on educating customers about products and services, enhancing user experience and customer satisfaction.
• Partner Training: Aims to align the knowledge and skills of business partners with the company's standards, ensuring consistency in quality and service.
• Supplier Training: Ensures suppliers are up-to-date with company policies, product specifications, and quality standards, leading to a smoother supply chain.
• Compliance Training: Mandatory for all stakeholders to understand and adhere to industry regulations and company policies.
• Product Training: Equips stakeholders with in-depth knowledge about new products or updates, vital for sales, support, and development teams.
• Skill Development Training: Tailored to improve specific skills of various external groups, contributing to their professional growth in alignment with company objectives.

Why are extended enterprise LMS important?

• Expand Training Reach: They enable organizations to train not only internal employees but also customers, partners, and suppliers, ensuring consistent knowledge across the entire business network.
• Enhance Customer Engagement: By educating customers about products and services, these systems improve user experience and customer loyalty.
• Streamline Compliance: They ensure that external stakeholders are up-to-date with relevant regulations and company policies, reducing risk and maintaining legal compliance.
• Boost Productivity and Collaboration: By aligning the skills and knowledge of all parties involved in the business process, extended enterprise LMS foster better collaboration and efficiency.

Extended Enterprise LMS Features

• Multi-Tenant Architecture: A crucial feature of an Extended Enterprise LMS is its multi-tenant architecture. This allows the creation of distinct learning environments within the same system for different audiences, such as departments, partners, or customers, ensuring a personalized and relevant learning experience for each group.
• Customizable Branding and Interfaces: The system offers extensive customization options for branding and interfaces. Organizations can tailor the look and feel of the LMS to align with their brand identity, providing a seamless and cohesive experience for learners across different enterprises or departments.
• Advanced Reporting and Analytics: The LMS comes equipped with powerful analytics and reporting tools. These features enable organizations to track and analyze the learning progress and performance of different user groups, providing valuable insights for improving training strategies and outcomes.
• Integration Capabilities: An Extended Enterprise LMS can integrate smoothly with various business systems and tools, such as CRM, HRIS, and e-commerce platforms. This integration enhances the efficiency of training delivery and administration and allows for the synchronization of data across different systems.
• Scalable and Flexible Content Management: The system supports a wide range of content types and is designed to be scalable. This flexibility allows organizations to easily update, expand, or customize their training content to meet the evolving needs of their diverse audience, ensuring that the learning material remains relevant and effective.

Benefits Of Extended Enterprise LMS Software

Independent Tenants

Employees, customers, and partner training can have separate networks within the same platform. Independent platform admins can set up courses as they want. They can add courses, set up user permissions, determine who can see specific content, hide or go public with the content material or sell courses.

Fully Customizable Tenants

Implement Extended Enterprise in the different branches, departments, channels, or partners of your company and customize each instance with the features of LMS. It can help you acquire robust branding, image, language, and much more. The best part is that each tenant can have a distinct look and feel, colors, settings, and information.

Reduced Costs

Instead of using different LMS platforms for separate tenants, the all-in-one Extended Enterprise LMS works for all. You can get personalized themes and features at the cost of one platform. In addition, it enables you to have multiple tenants on the same platform at the same price, thus reducing company expenses.

Privacy

The tenants can be separately managed and trained on the same platform. The privacy settings allow you to decide members in each tenant network and also decide whether you want the user to know they are a part of a bigger LMS or not.

Paradiso LMS:

Standing at the forefront, AI based Paradiso LMS is renowned for its comprehensive and user-friendly interface. It excels in offering a multi-tenant architecture, allowing organizations to create multiple, customized learning environments. Its robust integration capabilities, advanced analytics, and a wide array of interactive learning tools make it an ideal choice for businesses seeking to extend their learning capabilities across various external networks.

Docebo LMS:

Known for its AI-powered recommendations and intuitive learning platform, Docebo excels in personalizing the learning experience. It also offers a rich set of features for content management and social learning, making it a strong contender in the extended enterprise LMS market.

TalentLMS:

TalentLMS is popular for its simplicity and flexibility, catering to both small businesses and large enterprises. It offers a customizable interface, easy content upload, and effective tracking tools, making it suitable for delivering training to external networks.

LearnUpon LMS:

This platform is recognized for its scalability and user-friendly design. LearnUpon provides seamless integrations with various business tools and supports a wide range of content types, facilitating effective training programs for extended enterprises.

Absorb LMS:

Absorb LMS is admired for its intelligent automation and responsive design. It's particularly effective in delivering mobile-friendly learning experiences, ideal for organizations with a geographically dispersed external audience.

SAP Litmos LMS:

Known for its strong analytics and mobile capabilities, SAP Litmos offers a solution that is both powerful and easy to use. Its robust features are well-suited for large organizations looking to deliver training to customers, partners, and other external groups.

Cornerstone OnDemand:

This LMS is well-regarded for its comprehensive learning and development suite, suitable for complex extended enterprise training needs. It offers extensive customization options and a wide range of reporting tools.

SkyPrep LMS:

SkyPrep is a versatile platform known for its intuitive design and strong customer support. It is an excellent choice for organizations that require a straightforward yet effective approach to extended enterprise learning.

Adobe Captivate Prime:

Adobe's solution is recognized for its engaging learning experience and powerful content authoring capabilities. It is well-suited for organizations that prioritize interactive and media-rich training content.

Moodle:

As an open-source platform, Moodle offers unparalleled flexibility and customization options. It's a great choice for organizations with specific learning requirements and those who have the capability to manage a more technically involved platform.

Bridge LMS

Bridge is appreciated for its ease of use and effective employee development tools. While it caters primarily to internal training needs, its features also adapt well to extended enterprise learning scenarios.